Green Room
by boutondor
Summary: Jello Forever May Challenge. "What she remembered the most was the green paint on the walls."


This is for Tracie who tried to cheer me up today after having such a bad day and really pushing me to participate in the Jello Forum challenge.

~o~

**The Green Room**

~o~

What she remembered the most was the green paint on the walls. Such an ugly green. It was the kind of green that was turning so much into gray that you weren't sure if the world hadn't desaturated a little when you walked into the room.

It was the color on the walls of the hospital where her mother succumbed to her injuries and died.

She hated that green.

~o~

Lisbon stood nervously in the waiting room. She had been offered to sit in one of the uncomfortable chairs, but she had declined, preferring to quench her nerves by walking around the room. After pacing for approximately five minutes, a young woman wearing a white lab coat approached her.

"Agent Lisbon?" she asked, holding her hand out. "I'm Dr. Miller."

Lisbon shook the doctor's hand. "Hello. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Dr. Miller said, smiling warmly. "Please, follow me."

Lisbon followed her through the revolving doors that led to a colorless corridor. The two of them walked in silence for about a minute or two until Dr. Miller spoke again.

"I was pleasantly surprised to receive your call, Agent Lisbon. Patrick has been here over a month without anyone enquiring after him. I didn't think we would hear from anyone."

"I was recently promoted head of a unit," Lisbon explained meekly, feeling awkward. This was a bad idea. She never should have come here.

Dr. Miller's amiability seemed unaffected by Lisbon's pitiable excuse. "I understand, Agent Lisbon. Life has a funny way of going by without us noticing. The important thing is that you are here now." She stopped in front of a door and peeked in. "Good, he's awake. He'll be happy to see you. Yours is the only name he has recognized apart from his wife's, child's, and Red John's."

Lisbon couldn't help frowning. Surely Jane wasn't so unwell that he couldn't remember his life, could he?

Dr. Miller seemed to have caught the meaning behind Lisbon's frown and added, "You should know that the Patrick Jane behind this door is very different from the one you know. You must prepare yourself for a shock."

Lisbon nodded as she peered inside through the window. Jane was sitting on the bed, looking into an unknown distance, obviously unaware that the two women were observing him. Lisbon wondered once again whether coming here had been a good idea.

Dr. Miller seemed to sense Lisbon's apprehension and unease. "The Patrick you know is still in there somewhere. You may not see him today, next month or even next year, but he's in there somewhere. We just have to be able to reach him."

Lisbon didn't say anything, and simply looked at Jane. He seemed to barely be the shell of the man she once knew.

"Ready?" Dr. Miller asked as she pressed the few keys to unlock the door.

Lisbon didn't trust herself to answer. Dr. Miller, knowing she wouldn't get an answer from Lisbon, opened the door and led her inside the room.

"Patrick?" Dr. Miller said gently to Jane. He didn't even bat an eye at the sound of his name. "Patrick?" she said again, this time a little louder and not as gentle. Jane seemed to snap out of his trance and looked at Dr. Miller. "You have a visitor today, Patrick." She indicated Lisbon who stood awkwardly next to her.

Jane looked at her, but didn't seem to _see_ her. She smiled a little, hoping that he might sense that she wasn't a threat. He blinked a few times and then whispered, "Lisbon."

Dr. Miller's smiled widened. She clearly saw Jane's recognition of the agent as a small victory. "Yes, Patrick, this is Agent Lisbon," she said encouragingly.

Jane slowly got up from the bed and unsteadily walked towards Lisbon. She tried not to react when he raised his hand to touch her face. It was so odd to see him, standing in front of her, touching her, but not feeling his presence. The Jane she had known and loved was gone.

. . .

"Shall I leave you two alone for a moment?" Dr. Miller asked.

"Yes," Jane answered right away.

"No," Lisbon said, a mere fraction of a second later.

That's when she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes. In that instant, she recognized Patrick Jane.

"Yes," Lisbon corrected herself, her eyes never leaving Jane's. Jane looked at her with a mixture of pleasure, bewilderment and apprehension. Lisbon closed her eyes and looked at Dr. Miller. "You can leave us alone for a while," she told her.

Dr. Miller, no doubt seeing the resolution in Lisbon's stance, nodded. "I'll be right outside. There's a bell here if you need anything," she said, indicating the red button by the door.

'Bell' was just a euphemism for 'alarm'.

. . .

"You were gone," Jane said once Dr. Miller was out of the room. "Are you really here?"

"Yes, I am," she said firmly, trying to reassure him. Had she just walked into a very bad dream? This couldn't be real, could it? A reality with such a broken, desperate Patrick Jane, after everything that had happened to him, seemed to too cruel to exist. If it was, she hoped she would wake up soon.

"They died, you know."

Lisbon nodded. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she had just been promoted head of the unit assigned with the Red John case. Fate just seemed too cruel for Lisbon to give it a nudge.

~o~

After the first visit, she started coming to the hospital every week. That lasted three months. Then she started skipping a week here and there, getting caught up with work. Then they had three high-profile open cases and she didn't come for nine weeks.

When she came back, she wasn't led to Jane's room as usual, but was greeted by Dr. Miller and was invited to sit down in an office.

"Patrick has made immense progress the last few weeks," Dr. Miller as she sat down on the chair across from Lisbon. "I'm very close to discharging him."

Lisbon looked at Dr Miller with surprise. Jane hadn't seemed anywhere near ready to leave the hospital the last time she had seen him. He had made very little progress in the months she had visited him regularly.

"There is a hiccup, however," Dr. Miller began, her tone of voice betraying hesitation, which peeked Lisbon's curiosity. In the months she had been visiting the hospital, Lisbon had never seen Dr. Miller awkward. "When you first began your visits, I thought you were really helping him get better."

So did I, Lisbon wanted to say, but kept silent.

"That's why I was encouraging your visits. However, I began to see some distress whenever you were mentioned. This distress subsided when you stopped coming. As the distress diminished, he began to forget you."

Lisbon widened her eyes in shock. He had remembered her after everything that had happened to him, after forgetting everyone and everything apart from his family and Red John. How could he forget her?

"I was as surprised as you are, believe me. That's when I pieced everything together, the likely history between the two of you."

Lisbon's eyes lowered, shame reddening her face. "We never acted on it. I liked his wife." She paused and swallowed. Hard. A knot formed in her throat and tears threatened to well up in her eyes. She refused to give Red John the satisfaction of taking her dignity from her. She looked Dr. Miller directly in the eye, Lisbon's own eyes completely dry and said, "I loved his daughter."

Dr. Miller gently rested her hand on top of hers. She didn't try to squeeze it, or even hold it. It was simply resting there, barely applying any pressure, almost as if it were mid-air instead of lying on her hand. "I am not judging you. You're a good person and a good friend to Patrick. What I'm about to propose may be very difficult for you to consider," she said with a sympathetic voice.

"I told Patrick someone he used to work with would be visiting him today. I gave him your name and he didn't seem to recognize it." Dr. Miller paused, waiting for a reaction from Lisbon. When she realized she wouldn't get any, she continued: "what we do now is up to you. You can tell him the truth, who you are, who you were to him, or you can just divulge the professional side of your relationship."

"You encourage lying to your patients, Dr. Miller?" Lisbon said coldly. How could she consider reducing their relationship to a professional one? If nothing else, they had been friends; they had been very good friends. She couldn't possibly throw that away.

"Generally, no, but in our career, psychiatrists often learn that carnal rules should be bent with certain patients. We must go with what we think is the best way to go for the patient's happiness."

"And lying to him is best?"

"Omitting," Dr. Miller clarified. "I think that in order to accept what has happened to his family and deal with the guilt on a level that won't drive him completely mad, is to erase the guilt that comes from his relationship with you. I strongly believe that once he subconsciously fully accepts the events as circumstances outside his control, he will remember the importance you had in his life."

"And when will that happen?" Lisbon asked, the coldness still there.

"I really don't know, Agent Lisbon. But like I said, it is entirely up to you which course we take with Patrick."

"I want to see him," she demanded.

Dr. Miller sighed, but nodded. "Of course." She got up and Lisbon followed her down the now familiar corridor. Within a few minutes, Lisbon was standing in Jane's room with Dr. Miller on the other side of the door, just like so many times before. But this time, things were different; Jane seemed to be himself again.

. . .

He stood up to greet her and shook her hand warmly. "Agent Lisbon, is it?" He said, smiling.

Lisbon eyed him closely, trying to see a glitter of recognition somewhere in his eyes. There was none. "Yes, I'm Teresa Lisbon," she answered, defeated. Until now, she had hoped that Dr. Miller had been wrong and that Jane would recognize her rapidly like he had the first time she had been there.

"Dr. Miller said that we worked together."

Lisbon nodded. "Briefly."

"Well, it's nice that you've come to visit. I know this place isn't exactly cheerful."

"You seem to be doing well." The first time she had been in this room, Lisbon had wondered if she had been dreaming. She found herself wondering the exact same thing because of Jane's exact opposite behavior. Fate just loved irony.

She didn't stay long. She had nothing to tell Patrick Jane that he didn't already know.

~o~

She had been there the day he was discharged. She had sat, for the first time, in one of those horribly uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room. They oddly reminded her of the chairs in the waiting room of another hospital where she had been almost twenty years before.

He hadn't even noticed her. He just walked past her, and walked out of the building through the double doors a few feet away from her. She saw Dr. Miller making a move to catch Jane and tell him she had been there, waiting for him, but Lisbon shook her head. They shouldn't force things.

She watched him get into a cab through the blinds of the window. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

She suddenly remembered how her father had promised that everything would be all right in the end.

Fate was laughing at her.

. . .

As she walked down the corridor, she couldn't help ponder that this would be the last time and in a way, it was as bittersweet as the first time.

The door of his room had been left open and she stepped inside cautiously. She sat on the bed and was overwhelmed by the powerful Patrick Jane smell that inhabited the room. Her mind flashed to another empty bed in a cold room – although that room had been full of medical equipment that had failed to save her mother's life. This room had, in a way, failed to save something as well.

This was the room where Jane's love for her had succumbed to its injuries and died.

She looked at the walls. They were such an ugly green.

She hated that green.

~o~

The End.

~o~

**Author's Notes:** Sorry for those of you on author email alert. For some reason, FFN would not publish the story, so I had to re-publish it. I deleted the first published story and this is the second one. I hope it wasn't too confusing to anyone.


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